1. Clinical Databases : MEDLINE S.Prasanth Kumar Dept. of Bioinformatics Applied Botany Centre (ABC) Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, INDIA www.facebook.com/Prasanth Sivakumar FOLLOW ME ON ACCESS MY RESOURCES IN SLIDESHARE prasanthperceptron CONTACT ME [email_address]
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4. MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity. MeSH descriptors are arranged in both an alphabetic and a hierarchical structure. Most general level : very broad headings. e.g. "Anatomy" or "Mental Disorders." More specific headings : more narrow levels of the twelve-level hierarchy e.g. "Ankle" and "Conduct Disorder." There are 26,142 descriptors in 2011 MeSH. There are also over 177,000 entry terms that assist in finding the most appropriate MeSH Heading, for example, "Vitamin C" is an entry term to "Ascorbic Acid." MESH keywords
5. MESH Applications The MeSH thesaurus is used by NLM for indexing articles from 5,400 of the world's leading biomedical journals for the MEDLINE®/PubMED® database . It is also used for the NLM-produced database that includes cataloging of books, documents, and audiovisuals acquired by the Library. Each bibliographic reference is associated with a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the item. Similarly, search queries use MeSH vocabulary to find items on a desired topic. MEDLINE is the primary component of PubMed ® , part of the Entrez series of databases provided by the NLM National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). MEDLINE may also be searched via the NLM Gateway
6. Details of MEDLINE Time coverage : generally 1946 to the present , with some older material. Source : Currently, citations from approximately 5,516 worldwide journals in 39 languages; 60 languages for older journals. Citations for MEDLINE are created by the NLM, international partners , and collaborating organizations. Updates : Since 2005, between 2,000-4,000 completed references are added each day Tuesday through Saturday; nearly 700,000 total added in 2010 . Broad subject coverage : The subject scope of MEDLINE is biomedicine and health, broadly defined to encompass those areas of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering needed by health professionals and others engaged in basic research and clinical care, public health, health policy development, or related educational activities. MEDLINE also covers life sciences vital to biomedical practitioners, researchers, and educators, including aspects of biology, environmental science, marine biology, plant and animal science as well as biophysics and chemistry. Increased coverage of life sciences began in 2000.